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I havenít got a Class 50 but a fellow club member has two.The problem with derailing appears, to me, to be due to the coupling on the locomotive being body mounted rather than the bogie. Hence there is no articulation.

Another problem that occurred when we were running the two 50s in opposite directions (particularly in our fiddle yard where the tracks are a bit close) is that when passing at slow speed going in opposite directions, the powerful magnets force the two locos to lean together (where the magnets attract) and derail both engines.

Thanks for the replies. I'm glad I'm not the only one. The problem is certainly the body mounted coupling. As with an articulated lorry, the back of the trailer swings out to the right when it makes a left turn, and vice versa. The amount of swing depends on the pivot point of the wheels. The Class 68 is a 4 wheel bogie so is mounted nearer the end of the loco, so there is less swing which the couplings seem to cope with. The class 50 being a 6 wheel bogie pivots further away so more swing dragging the leading carriage or truck off the track. It is also impossible to couple any train whilst on a curve without a lot of operator intervention. I feel the old adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!'

It is also impossible to couple any train whilst on a curve without a lot of operator intervention.

This has been the problem that almost nobody seems to have noticed or called out about all close coupling systems in British N since day 1. All the coaching stock, Dapol, Farish, has this problem - the coupling needs to be forced to turn/extend with the bogie, which none of them do. I'm not sure how this continues to be overlooked.

Cheers,Alan

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Quote from: Roy L S

If Dr Al is online he may be able to provide a more comprehensive answer.

ďWe have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.Ē Ė Dr. Carl Sagan

My class 50 is running really well with a rake of Minitrix blue / grey coaches I havnt tried it on any other stock yet but will try it on China clay wagons or milk tanks tonight .Will post my results tomorrow or the next time I go down the shed ,itís too cold to go down in this weather unless I have visitors , I canít afford the gas fires on just for me .Bob Tidbury

Not being able to couple on a curve (except a very gentle curve) is a standard issue for Kadees in H0/00 gauge, too. Layouts that use couplings of this sort need to be - and often are - designed around this limitation. I do not believe that this is unique to the Class 50.

Having renumbered/renamed all of my large logo class 50s, I have finally got around to varnishing them. After some initial difficulties with the varnish giving a grainy mottled finish and not properly covering the shine from the number/name removals, I realised that I was holding the can too far from the model when spraying, causing the varnish to dry before it reached the model, and holding it at a 10-20cm distance improved matters considerably.

Here are some photographs of the class 50s in their post varnished state. The photograph of 50037 "Illustrius" in NSE livery is still in original condition: I have yet to renumber the NSE liveried examples of the class 50s that I have (although I plan to keep one as "Illustrious". 50040 is renamed, but not renumbered.

Yes good work James. I recommend an airbrush for varnishing. Precision Paints (no connection) do airbrush-ready varnish in matt, satin and gloss and I've had good results; in my opinion rattlecans lack finesse for N-gauge.

Thank you both! I'm a little reluctant to invest in an airbrush without a clear advantage that outweighs the storage space, compressor noise, set up effort and all manner of other difficulty entailed by an airbrush. I seem to have got acceptable results with this so far, so I shall perhaps continue with this for the present.

I have been spending some time this week-end setting up the lighting on my class 50s with the Zimo MX618N18 decoder, and I thought that people might find it helpful if I were to share my settings to allow anyone else to set these up in the same way with rather less work.

The setup that I have is that F0 turns the headlights/tail lights on and off, depending on the direction, in the normal way (i.e. the normal way for a locomotive fitted with a 6-pin chip). F1 suppresses the tail lights in either direction, and F4 operates the cab lights, which are also directional.

The following instructions are intended to be used in conjunction with JMRI Decoder Pro, which is the easier way to set this up, as it can be done from menus rather than programming individual CVs by hand. The headings below are the tab names for the individual tabs in Decoder Pro.